Memoriam et Futuram
by lifesabitchthenyoureundead
Summary: As Magnus comes to terms with the loss and the gaping wound in his heart, he recalls how he first came to meet Alec... ...There he laid till the sky changed from a bleak gray that mimicked the colours in Magnus's head, to a deep black, the colour of Magnus's innermost thoughts. There he lay till he drifted into an uneasy sleep filled with memories. The first memories of Alec...
1. solitarius

Magnus pulled his fluffy dressing gown around himself and closed his eyes. He shivered from the feeling of the cold, winter frosted glass pressed against his forehead and with the tips of his fingers he felt the soft downy texture of the gown, with the clear, hard circular beads of the daffodil-yellow ducks eyes and smooth silky texture of the duck pattern printed upon the deep blue of the dressing gown; the gown that was probably meant for a child but suited Magnus so much better. He could feel the rough, uneven wooden floor beneath his feet, polished to within an inch of its life in a failed attempt to rid its dusty surface of the bumps and blisters inflicted from so much use over the many years the old house had stood. His feet were slipper-less and cold. His forehead was cold. His whole body was cold, cold from the winter's frost, cold from the loneliness that engulfed him. It was a bitter wind that pulled at his heartstrings, like a normal wind would pull at the ends of his hair when it wasn't gelled up into its amazing glittery array of spikes, each carefully positioned to perfection.

With a sigh he opened his eyes and stared at the pale, translucent reflection that stared back at him in the glass. His eyes looked too big for his slender face and striking cheekbones. They stood out against the dark shadows beneath his eyes. How long had it been since he'd had a good night's sleep? He had no idea. His lips were chapped and bitten. His usually smooth, sharp jaw-sharp as his cheekbones- was like sand paper, bristly with stubble. He turned his head away from a reflection he would be ashamed to let anyone see and pulled the heavy velvet curtains closed. This brought on a shower of dust and the smell of decay and regret filled the air. With another sigh, as long and deep as the last, Magnus trudged slowly back through the dusty sitting room and dark hallway, filled with the musty smell of mold and disuse. His bedroom lay at the end of the hall, and he stumbled to the door, noticing for the first time the multiple stains on his gown and the torn shirt beneath. The stains were a mystery, seeing as he hadn't eaten for days, and hadn't been anywhere for at least a week. Is that how long it had been since he had changed his clothes?

This was a depressing thought, so Magnus pushed it to the back of his mind, like so many of the other thoughts he had these days. Instead of facing these thoughts, like so many people in today's society, he reflected gloomily, he decided to go back to bed and listen to My Chemical Romance on full volume. He tumbled through the doorway and was annoyed-yet again- that he hadn't moved the bed closer to the door to stop him from falling on the dirty floor, like he had just done. Again. He couldn't be bothered to stand up and make the short journey from the door to the bed, so he rolled onto his side and pulled limply at the duvet that was balanced precariously on the end of his bed from where he had kicked it off in the night after a bad nightmare. It gave way and flopped onto the floor beside him. Pulling it around him, trying to ignore the smell that wafted from it warning him that he needed to change the sheets, he curled up into the foetal position on the cold hard floor, feeling more vulnerable and depressed than ever. His headphones had fallen off the bed with his duvet, and he placed them over his ears now, blocking out the sounds of the outside world. Magnus laid there with his hands over his ears holding the headphones in place, curled up in a defensive position with the duvet covering most of him, a lump in the floor digging painfully into his hipbone, and there he laid till the sky changed from a bleak gray that mimicked the colours in Magnus's head, to a deep black, just like the colour of Magnus's innermost thoughts. There he lay till he drifted into an uneasy sleep filled with memories. The first memories of Alec...


	2. Primo Aspectu

"Magnus!"

Magnus was woken from a disturbing dream, in which he invented a way to travel back in time, just by making toast. He had gone back millions of years to when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the air was humid enough to make his dazzling electric-blue spikes that perched precariously on top of his head droop and weep sparkling blue tears down his fabulously flawless skin that was being viciously attacked by mosquitoes the size of hamsters. It was here that he saw the giant space craft land. It was in the shape of a bath. Not a luxurious bath like his one that could hold ten people and 100 litres of water with ease. Not a futuristic bath made of shining metal covered in lots of glittering buttons and lights. Just a plain white bath. In fact, it was so ordinary that Magnus wasn't even sure it was a spacecraft. Maybe baths just used to fall out of the sky before magic was brought to the Earth by demons and science was born just to piss magic off. Just as Magnus was plucking up the courage to go and have a nose around the now landed and still bath, something emerged. Something big. Something yellow. Something... fluffy? Magnus could not believe his eyes, so he inhaled deeply. Yep, that's the smell of bird shit alright, he thought calmly, panic momentarily suspended by surprise. A giant duck or five have just landed from outer space on our planet, and are now attempting to eat the nosy tyrannosaurus rexs' that were having a nose around the bottom of the giant baths legs, which were shaped like giant ducks feet.

He was just starting to sense the paralysing feeling of panic coming back, quickly to be followed by fear, when a shout, that sounded too loud and angry to be Superman coming to rescue him, sent him tumbling out from under the covers onto the plush, fluffy pink carpet of the not so fluffy Rayland Crowley, whose apartment he was currently borrowing. Well, borrowing wasn't quite accurate. Mr Crowley was away on holiday so Magnus saw nothing wrong with using an unused room for a few days, till his new apartment lost the disgusting smell of demon ichor and vomit, left by the previous owners.

As he rose from the tangled mess of blankets on the floor, his mind produced the slightly hysterical thought that if the small group of people who think that just before the world ends, the dinosaurs would roam once more and all the other organisms that lived alongside them. Magnus wondered if his dream was actually a premonition, and if so, whether he could find a way to resurrect Will just so he could see his worst nightmares come to life: humongous ducks invade the Earth before we all die. Then Magnus realized that this thought was cruel and a tad sadistic, and he hadn't disliked Will, so he pushed the thought from his mind and followed the echoing sounds of the old door which sounded like it was taking the beating of a lifetime. Magnus was suddenly very conscious of the fact that, not only was the door old, but also very flimsy. With a sudden urgency, Magnus kicked the blankets from around his ankles and half ran, half stumbled to the door which sounded like it was starting to give. "Alright alright!" He yelled as loud as he could while sleep clogged his throat like a thick fog. He'd given up on the idea that the neighbors might not have heard the racket when the foghorn on the other side of the door had started up again "Magnus Bane!"

"I'm coming!" Opening the door to see a giant pink wedding cake was the last thing he had expected on this early Saturday morning. However, on closer inspection, he realized that it couldn't be a cake. There were three simple facts to support this statement:

1. Cakes don't have bright red, sweaty faces.

2. Cakes don't smell of sweat and foundation (Magnus didn't know what foundation smelt like because he wears it, but because it wears him!) and

3. Cakes don't slap you in the face whilst shrieking something about being left on the doorstep for hours and _what's happened to manners and old-fashioned gentlemen these days. _

After a cup of tea, with a slosh of brandy (half a bottle counts as a slosh in Magnus' opinion), he had calmed the sweaty pink soufflé enough that she had stopped yelling. "I am here to pick up an ingredient for Ragnor Fell. Y'know, he told me that you are real gentlemen! It must have been a long time since you two last met! Honestly!" After another few minutes of this Magnus got bored of being scolded like he was in high school again, and wandered off to find said ingredient he owed Ragnor. Unfortunately, the soufflés voice carried through walls (again alerting Magnus to the neighbours- and feeling rather sorry for them!). Magnus made a mental note to give Ragnor a call later and ask him not to send any more cakes (Magnus wondered briefly if Ragnor would get the joke if he said he preferred Danish pastries as they are lighter and not vibrantly coloured and hard to ignore. He then wondered where these rude, offensive and quite frankly weird thoughts were coming from, which led to a train of thoughts about telekinetic space ducks and brainwashed dinosaurs).

As he was reaching for a dusty box which contained the wanted substance in a large jar on the top shelf of a bookcase, he realized it was a strange yellow colour which, at the time of purchase must have seemed like a great idea, but now reminded Magnus of the ducks. He shuddered, which made the rickety ladder Magnus was balancing precariously at top of wobble and quiver violently, and Magnus had to clutch at the bookcase to stop himself from falling. As he thanked his lucky starfish (which were in a similar-but less dusty- jar in the bathroom) he happened to glance to his left and happened to see out the window which stretched from ceiling to floor (not for the first time Magnus criticized Mr Crowley's interior design- doesn't everyone know that exposing books to direct sunlight damages them?). Outside, there were two boys- probably in their late teens- running past. He caught a glimpse of black ink on pale scarred skin, and gripped the bookcase so tightly that he heard it groaning in protest. Were they coming for him? Were the neighbours actually downworlders who had called the shadowhunters instead of the police when the racket had woken them? Curse the drunken soufflé in the other room, who was finishing off his bottle of bandy at that particular point in one of the boys, with tawny hair and an extremely bright but darkly tainted energy about him, called the others name. "Alec! This way!" and they sprinted to the end of the street before turning left and disappearing from view.

Magnus had craned his neck to watch them run- especially the one called Alec, who had beautiful sky-blue eyes and hair black as a raven wings- and he had forgotten that he was standing on a ladder, one that no longer wanted to take his weight. With the sudden cracking of splintering wood, and a loud swear word that cut the endless babble and occasional glugging sounds coming from the other room short, Magnus tumbled to the floor, landing in a heap. The yellow box fell with him and opened on the way down, releasing the jar holding the vile looking brown liquid. It smashed as it hit the floor, a fraction of a second after Magnus, and as the sleeping serums quick-spreading vapours filled Magnus' nostrils, his last conscious thought was Alec...


	3. Dies Somnis

Magnus brushed the crumbs from his ice cream cone off his lap, as they didn't really match his shiny black leggings with quite realistic pictures of doughnuts on them (he'd been known to ignore stains on jumpers and trousers if they looked interesting and added to the design). He glanced up as Tessa meandered over slowly from the duck pond where she had been talking to the tiny fluffy spring ducklings (a neat little spell Magnus had taught her) holding her ice cream, already melting, sticky trails running down her hand. She brushed a strand of hair out of her stormy grey eyes and tucked it neatly behind her ear with the hand she wasn't holding the melting ice cream, which was leaving a lovely brown trail on her wrist. She stood by the bench, softly glowing golden sunlight highlighting a halo around her face and making her delicate features seem even more delicate. The midsummer sunlight added soft golden streaks to her rich brown hair. Pity brown and grey weren't his favourite colours, as Tessa was worthy of a place among the angels, even if she wasn't one. This got Magnus thinking about how Tessa would look like with glossy black hair and sky blue eyes, like the boy he had seen out of his window a few days before. Magnus continued daydreaming about the cute angel boy he had seen until Tessa gave him a sharp kick on the ankle.

"Ow! Why did you kick me?" Magnus put as much surprise and innocence into his voice as he could while trying to suppress the red blush forming on his cheekbones; certainly not as pretty as the delicate touch of a rose that sat lightly on Tessa's cheekbones. This thought didn't help to clear his mind as Tessa's delicate face had now been replaced by the angelic boys beautifully shaped one. Clearing his mind of a blushing angel, Magnus focused on what Tessa had just said.

"Well, you know I don't like to be stared at." Magnus was suddenly very conscious of the fact that he had been staring intensely at her with his beautiful (if he did say so himself) feline eyes whilst he had been daydreaming about someone else. Hiding his guilt, Magnus smiled dreamily at Tessa "My apologies, I'm just really tired". "Well, I hope the rest of our day isn't going to be so... slow." She studied Magnus' face intently. "You want Alec?" Magnus, who had been slouched on the uncomfortable park bench enjoying the sun, sat bolt upright with his eyes bulging slightly. "What did you say?" His voice came out very high pitched, much too screechy for his usual melodic tones. Tessa's eyebrows shot up and she took a step back from the bench. "I just asked if you would like a lick. You know, of my ice cream. Or what's left of it anyway... God, what's got into you?" "Sorry, I..." Magnus couldn't think of how to finish that sentence without upsetting Tessa, so he answered her question. "I'm fine, thank you. I have brain freeze from my ice cream. You always tell me I eat too quickly." He gave her an apologetic, slightly cheeky smile. Tessa sighed and plonked herself down next to Magnus. "Honestly Magnus, sometimes I really wonder what's going through your head." And I'm really glad you don't know, thought Magnus. He sat back and closed his eyes, letting the sunlight wash over him as Tessa chattered about her travels in the past year...


End file.
